Those are clips from a much longer press conference, which you can read here: "Transcript: Pittsburgh Steelers offensive tackle Alejandro Villanueva met the media Monday to discuss what happened prior to Sunday's game in Chicago" (ESPN). Excerpt:
After the meeting ... based on my unique circumstances and based on the fact that I've served in the Army and pretty much that my life is lived through the military, I asked Ben [Roethlisberger] if there was a way to define the inside or where it is we were going to stay and if I could watch the national anthem from the tunnel, and he agreed....To the question,"What did you express to your teammates Saturday night about any potential feelings you had about not seeing the field?"
I would say that my personal thoughts about the situation is that regardless of this plan, very few players knew that I was going to the tunnel because I only asked the team leadership. And because of that I did not give them an opportunity to stand with me during the national anthem. That is the very embarrassing part of my end in what transpired, because when everybody sees an image of me standing by myself, everybody thinks that the team, the Steelers, are not behind me, and that's absolutely wrong.
It's quite the opposite. They all would have ... actually the entire team would have been out there with me, even the ones who wanted to take a knee would have been with me had they known these extreme circumstances that at Soldier Field, in the heat of the moment, when I've got soldiers, wounded veterans texting me that I have to be out there, I think everything would have been put aside, from every single one of my teammates, no doubt.
So because of that, I've made Coach Tomlin look bad, and that is my fault, and that is my fault only. I made my teammates look bad, and that is my fault, and my fault only. And I made the Steelers also look bad, and that is my fault, and my fault only. So unwillingly, I made a mistake. I talked to my teammates about the situation, hopefully they understand it. If they don't, I still have to live with it, because the nature of this debate is causing a lot of very heated reaction from fans from players, and it's undeserving to all of the players and coaches from this organization.
AV: There's a lot of levels, and there's a lot of reasons why people join the Army. But at the end of the day ... it happens all the time, people die for the flag. There's no way else to put it. When somebody's about to go on a mission, when somebody's loading up the Chinook, when somebody's ready to go, there's nothing else that's going to justify other than the men to the left and right dying for that mission. I wish I could stay home. I wish we could all play "Call of Duty" and not have to go to war. Some men, some women, sign up for this tough challenge, and they have to do it for the flag. When I see a flag of a mission on the shoulder of a soldier that reminds me that that guy's with me. It reminds me that I have to fight and lay my life down for him. Whether it's in my unit, whether it's Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, it doesn't matter. You're going to have a flag on your shoulder, I'm going to identify that, and we're fighting for each other. So that's what the flag means to me, that's what the flag means to a lot of veterans. Wounded warriors, they have no legs, they have shrapnel in their legs, they stand up and salute [during] the national anthem, it means a lot to them, it means a lot to me. So I think my teammates respected this thoroughly. It was just not communicated and the plan did not allow them the chance to get out and support me or maybe go back to the lab and sit five more hours before the game and figure out a plan. I thought we had to go to bed, work something in the middle. Unfortunately, I threw them under the bus unintentionally....
[E]very single time I see that picture of me standing by myself I feel embarrassed to a degree, because like I said, unintentionally I left my teammates behind. It wasn't me stepping forward. I never planned to boycott the plan that the Steelers came up with. I just thought that there would be some middle ground where I could stay in the tunnel, nobody would see me, and then afterward I just wouldn't talk to the media, like I do all the time. I'll avoid you guys, I'll shower, bring my clothes in, never address you guys and two weeks later you guys will be talking about something else....
Posts
495 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 495 Newer› Newest»"Yet I think it's still apparent there's enough brutality that can't be justified to merit protest."
In such a large nation with such immense cultural fissures and such a high degree of violence there will always be an endless stream of outrages. Perfection is not possible.
The rate of whatever can fall by half, or 3/4ths, but that is irrelevant to the symbolic significance of even one case. This is not a rational response, this is a matter of tribal conflict.
For that matter, because of the symbolic nature of the problem, arguments about numbers are irrelevant. That the BLM business has very likely resulted in 4000 or so excess murders in the US due to hands-off policing is not an effective argument, because that requires breaking people out of their natural personal and tribal solipsism. Its matters much less that x was killed, but that x was killed by y.
sparrow: Are you seriously that obtuse? Or are you stringing me on?
No, he's just being our lovable rh. Yes, he is being obtuse, but his own special brand of obtuse. He honestly doesn't understand this stuff, and he's trying to make sense of it using his own (entirely inapt) categories.
I've got no problem with this, but it has nothing to do with the current "protests".
Fundamental disagreement that's worth talking about openly and honestly. Both sides need to LISTEN and show some respect. Both sides. That will take time but it can be done.
Thanks Michael! Again, without any conscious thought, you make Rhhardins point about the idiocy of forced compulsion. It just takes your particular ox to be gored to illuminate the core issue.
"If you feel deeply part of America why do you need the flag?
I don't need it, for example."
I don't need it per se but, because it's such a clear symbol that when someone disrespects the flag they are communicating their disrespect for the American ideal. Ironically it's this very ideal that protects their speech in the first place.
"This just isn't serious. We know there's police brutality. We know there's racism. We know that parents sometimes don't really love their children! Asking for more "evidence" before we can move on and address these issues in a just matter is just obfuscating."
Do you have a whole closet full of straw men?
Henry said...
If you want to be Gandhi, be Gandhi
If you want to be Godwin, be Godwin.
Here's a short list of things to consider:
* Base rate neglect
* Confirmation bias
* Feedback loops
Fair enough; Gandhi was the first example that popped into my mind of someone widely respected who advocated unilateral disarmament in the face of aggressive, violent opposition but I'll retract the point as being an unnecessary invocation of the Nazis.
Maybe you can let me know what you think passively accepting the Left's rules when they apply to the non-Left but not insisting that the Left live by those same rules will accomplish. I'm assuming you agree that the Left (and Media generally) are happy to inflict pain and damage on people expressing what they see as unpopular opinions. How would you suggest we stop that, Henry?
In such a large nation with such immense cultural fissures and such a high degree of violence there will always be an endless stream of outrages. Perfection is not possible.
I agree with this and I said just about exactly the same thing here yesterday. I think people want to know, first, when incidents of brutality and abuse come up they aren't just swept under the carpet. It's about accountability and not sweeping things under the rug.
It just leads to a better society overall in any case.
The question is what should the team owners (assuming they are still in a position to call the shots) do now.
I think the correct solution is this:
State that any player who does not wish to stand respectfully during the National Anthem shall be free to remain off the field.
Any player who takes the field during the National Anthem will be required to stand respectfully or face disciplinary action. Players will not be compelled to show respect for the flag, but they will not be permitted to show disrespect while they are working.
During the game, the players are paid employees. They will be neither required nor forbidden from making one of the two choices.
This is the only reasonable compromise. The Steelers f--ked up by pretending that every player could agree on one of these choices to the exclusion of the other. The players cannot agree, and they should not have to.
There is more concern about NFL players committing free speech rather than violent crime.
You can speechify freely to your heart's content in the Untied States of America, but you can't force people to watch, or especially pay to watch. Maybe they can sell the NFL in China!
buwaya puti: again, your view of Americans from whatever lens you are hobbled by is 180-degrees out of phase. Perfection is not possible, but the greatest part of American Exceptionalism is problem solving. We don't just shrug our shoulders, throw up our hands and say "waddaya gonna do, nothing's perfect, it's good enough".
Players will not be compelled to show respect for the flag, but they will not be permitted to show disrespect while they are working.
YOU feel disrespected when someone kneels in protest during the anthem. That doesn't mean it's disrespectful.
"Maybe they can sell the NFL in China!"
Or London. I'm sure all those Guardian readers who applaud the kneelers will enthusiastically embrace American football.
I think people want to know, first, when incidents of brutality and abuse come up they aren't just swept under the carpet. It's about accountability and not sweeping things under the rug.
Oh, there was shitloads swept under the rug in St Louis, the vast majority of it by the BLM/White-Left coalition and their friends in power. Sunshine is a two-way street, "Hands up, don't shoot!" was complete bullshit.
Also I may not need the flag, but I like having a shared symbol that communicates my love of country. So every 4th of July and Flag day I post the colors even though I recognize our countries failings. It's convenient and useful to have this shared symbol that has so much history. Doesn't it mean anything to you? Is there no thrill when the Anthem is sung well or fireworks are shot off or the Blue Angels fly overhead?
I don't need the flag but I'm privileged to belong to this country and I'm pleased to display it in recognition of that fact.
We don't just shrug our shoulders, throw up our hands and say "waddaya gonna do, nothing's perfect, it's good enough".
Agreed. Strategically, I wonder how wise it is for protesters to define America by its worst elements. What if that's reciprocated?
YOU feel disrespected when someone kneels in protest during the anthem. That doesn't mean it's disrespectful.
YOU feel it's racism if I believe in my heart that there are different solutions that are better for people of all colors than those you advocate, but that doesn't mean it's racism!
tim in vermont: I have no problem with people boycotting the NFL for whatever suits their fancy. I just find the kneeling trigger to be meaningless, infantile, and weak. I have a lot more respect for people who boycott NFL over CTE and league soft-peddling player violence. Most people who boycott NFL likely do so because they are not lazy spectators.
rhhardin said...
See me, I'm dedicated to the flag, just like people who actually go and do something.
This is stupidly, idiotically wrong. If the flag's meaning were limited to the military Kaepernick et al wouldn't be protesting it.
Narrowly defining the flag's symbolism is an illogical effort to win the argument through definition because it can't be won on facts.
The NFL claims that it respects the players’ first amendment rights to protest the flag. However, it is obvious that the NFL does not respect a player’s right to not protest the flag. Why isn’t Roger Goodell, the team owner, or the coach showing support for Alejandro Villanueva the way they did for the protesters?
I am still waiting for the facts to come out from the investigation in Charlottesville. Hows about a little sunshine there?
Both the flag and national anthem are symbolic of a people, a community, a nation, and of an ideal that overcome diversity to recognize individual dignity, overcome redistributive change to recognize the product of individual labor, and overcame shared responsibility to recognize charity and voluntary associations in order to promote the general Welfare for the People and our Posterity.
America is not South Africa with a progressive constitution that established diversity (i.e. denial of individual dignity including racism, sexism) as the highest law of the land. America, or at least the constitution that organizes it, does not deny lives deemed unworthy, inconvenient, or profitable as a woman's rite (other than as quasi-religious ruling at the twilight fringe). America does not force men and women to work for other people's health care, education, sustenance, and shelter, other than as an opportunity to supplement individual effort.
Well, good luck to America, and Americans, a diverse association of people numbering over 300 million and countless more of our unPlanned Posterity.
YOU feel it's racism if I believe in my heart that there are different solutions that are better for people of all colors than those you advocate, but that doesn't mean it's racism!
I can't argue with that because I have no idea what you are specifically talking about.
Why is team unity more important than showing respect for the flag? If team unity is so important, then why didn’t Coach Tomlin make the protesters choose team unity over their protest?
"Both sides need to LISTEN and show some respect. Both sides. That will take time but it can be done."
Cannot happen. The sides aren't simply sides anymore, but isolated tribes with divergent real-world interests.
Or rather, one tribe (and I am not speaking of black people, mostly) is isolated and the other actually isn't, but for our purposes it doesn't matter. It just takes one to close his ears, and it is not in their interests to open them. There is, so far, no advantage in it. There may be no advantage in it until everything actually does get to the brink, and then it is usually too late.
Its non-rational and once the seed is planted unreason cannot be made to reason. History has only has scary lessons here.
As for MLK and the Letter from Birmingham Jail, I find his arguments, always, uncompelling.
He was a master at emotional rationalization, but that's what it was. What he really had to wield was a massively influential white establishment that was fully behind him, and was willing to override the local whites, who were in fact relatively weak.
He did not persuade, he overwhelmed.
The problem of the day was not, anyway, objectively, solved by his acts in spite of the myriad substantial and symbolic changes implemented thereafter. The tribal divide is greater now than then, and for that matter, the same then as now, the important tribal divide is between white people, not blacks and whites.
Everybody likes gay marriage. If I object to gay marriage in public I'll probably get fired. I know that, everyone knows that, and the common knowledge of that fact has very real effects on what opinions are expressed. That's just one example--pick any of the Left's ever-shifting "woke" topics.
Everybody likes civic rituals showing a common respect for the nation like standing respectfully for the anthem. If people object to doing that and pay no price for expressing those objections then the message is that SOME unpopular expressions are punished but SOME unpopular expressions are sacred and not to be punished. In what must be a crazy coincidence the mapping of what's punished and what's not happens to line up exactly with what causes and beliefs the Left favors and which they don't.
I'm insisting on equity. How we treat unpopular expressions has to be equitable. Not fair, understand, but equal--we either agree that those expressions are to be tolerated or we don't. Tolerating some and not tolerating others is no principle, it's just an expression of political power. I don't agree to that.
Bake the fucking cake.
I have no problem with people boycotting the NFL for whatever suits their fancy. I just find the kneeling trigger to be meaningless, infantile, and weak.
That's because you sort of despise people who love this country, so it's like you can't understand why people get all upset about abortion when it's not a human being, but just some unwanted cells. Some people actually believe, I know you will find this hard to accept, but they believe that an unborn baby is still a "baby", a baby human, and that killing it should be classified as murder, not some kind of 'ectomy.' Just because you disagree, I guess invalidates all of their logic and concern for fellow members of the human race!!! What power you have!
I don't need [the flag] per se but, because it's such a clear symbol that when someone disrespects the flag they are communicating their disrespect for the American ideal. Ironically it's this very ideal that protects their speech in the first place.
Maybe they're saying the flag reverence has no place in civilian life yet respect the country as much as you do.
I tried to analyze out where the various feelings are properly placed other than on the flag.
The military: using the flag to develop discipline external to civilian concerns.
Ethics: being called and going (into the military). This is how it gets moral and gets honored. Tie to the flag from above point.
The military view rubs off on the flag and lets civilians play soldier from time to time, but that's supeficial self-entertainment of the civilians.
A remnant: the flag as 4th of July decoration.
Everyday use: post offices, embassies abroad.
Confusing these in various ways gives flag disrespect outrage.
I welcome a better analysis. That's my take for the moment.
facts to come out from the investigation in Charlottesville
The only conclusion that can be clearly drawn is that the alleged abortionist did not intend to commit elective (e.g. premeditated) abortion since he didn't actually target anyone with his weapon of mass abortion (i.e. car). If anything, the circumstances suggest that this was an individual unfamiliar with the territory who was forced into a kill zone, if only for the visual propaganda harvested by an antagonistic mob.
I can't argue with that because I have no idea what you are specifically talking about.
LOL, as if by some circumstance you could claim I was wrong. What a tool. But your Rosa Parks comment comes to mind immediately.
n.n yes, yes and yes. America is so great, good and strong, it can take all of the protest and disrespect thrown at it with grace and charm. The anti-kneeling hysterics are acting weak, ignorant and stupid. The kneeling Negros have invaded the Trump-Right's safe space and they are triggered bigy. Thank Gawd they still have NASCAR.
buwaya: Most people aren't sociopaths so I don't think this is a productive approach to this situation.
I think it would be very "productive" if the considerable number of conservative (for want of a better label) chumps would wise up and stop wasting time attempting "good faith" arguments with people who are obviously not arguing in good faith. A different approach is needed. There are lots of lefties out there who are indeed "arguing like the sociopath" in the way I described, even if they are not real sociopaths in the sense that the leaders you point to can be described as sociopaths.
Richard said...The NFL claims that it respects the players’ first amendment rights to protest the flag. However, it is obvious that the NFL does not respect a player’s right to not protest the flag.
Worse than that: the NFL's sudden respect for individual player's political expression is brand new and entirely situational. They're trying to cloak this decision in principle but their own recent actions wholly undercut that attempt.
NFL Says Players Who Wear 9/11 Tribute Shoes Will Be Fined
NFL Won't Let Cowboys Wear Decals Supporting Dallas Police during Regular Season
I don't know if they enforced the threatened fines (I think they didn't), but the individual free speech principle they now claim to cherish was nowhere in evidence in those examples. I'm sure the next player to try to express some belief or opinion the league finds intolerable will discover that the principle doesn't apply then, either.
This is stupidly, idiotically wrong. If the flag's meaning were limited to the military Kaepernick et al wouldn't be protesting it.
Kaepernick is using the reverence for the flag that I'm claiming is a mistake if you place the feelings in the right places instead of on the flag.
He wants the outrage in order to get noticed. I'm saying the outrage is a mistake.
I also agree that he has no point at all, but that's a complicating wrinkle.
If anything, the circumstances suggest that this was an individual unfamiliar with the territory who was forced into a kill zone, if only for the visual propaganda harvested by an antagonistic mob.
Look at the second video down and I think that n.n.'s point seems to be borne out. But I guess the facts are just being "swept under the rug" as inconvenient to the liberal narrative of TRUMP RACIST! Amazing how quickly those peaceful protesters could lay their hands on deadly weapons.
I would love to read the witness statements, because what I have seen so far is far from cut and dried.
How would you suggest we stop that, Henry?
One way is to adopt the extremist approach, in which case you don't actually stop anything.
Another way is to stand for civil behavior. Antifa has effectively marginalized itself with its violence and indiscriminate attacks. The protests against conservatives in academy are also generating enough bad press to put their advocates on the defensive. At the same time, for every widely publicized protest and counterprotest, there are elections, debates, advocacy, parades, all happening without violence or suppression.
The protests at NFL games is an example of nonviolent, dignified, protests. Interesting, Bruce Maxwell, Rookie Catcher for the Oakland Athletics, has been kneeling with his hand on his heart, as his own personal compromise between expressing concern about racism and division and continuing to respect the flag: Oakland Athletics catcher Bruce Maxwell was cheered by the home crowd on Monday in his first at-bat since becoming the first Major League Baseball player to kneel during the playing of the national anthem.... "I've gotten a ton of support but also a ton of hate, so seeing a lot of fans putting the action itself aside and understanding the reason why I'm doing what I'm doing is huge and kind of made me smile a little bit. So that's a good feeling.".
That's because you sort of despise people who love this country,
You're just ossified, hard-core, never-give-a-inch, never-look-at-it-from-another's-pov type of guy.
Why does anyone need you to argue with? What's the upside?
The kneeling Negros have invaded the Trump-Right's safe space and they are triggered bigy. Thank Gawd they still have NASCAR.
Yes, yes, yes! It's all about racism... RAYCISM!!!
As far as I am concerned, I don't like politics with my sports, which is why I stopped watching ESPN a long time ago. This policy of "no escape from politics" is what really gets to me, but there are still escapes. Pandora, Netflix, Spotify, all of them allow you to filter this crap out of your life.
@Brookzene -- really appreciate your comments on this post.
"YOU feel disrespected when someone kneels in protest during the anthem. That doesn't mean it's disrespectful. "
The other side, Trumps side, is getting the message "we hate you", whatever the alleged intended meaning of this message is.
How do you argue someone out of this? You can't.
The only way to to fix this is through another emotional argument.
That is going to be extremely difficult, given the history.
Some form of "we love you" from the anti-Trumps (just a shorthand definition, but it serves). But its not easy to see how the financial/politico/bureaucratic/educational establishment can say that after a (perceived) lifetime of insult, threats and suppression from them. There is no credibility anymore.
Henry - thank you. I really appreciate that!
"Why does anyone need you to argue with? What's the upside?"
Because he is a side. Its he you need to persuade.
This is the problem in a nutshell.
Why does anyone need you to argue with? What's the upside?
Well, you could demonstrate to all and sundry the holes in my logic, but I think that Howard made his feelings pretty clear that he holds to views I claimed:
he kneeling Negros have invaded the Trump-Right's safe space and they are triggered bigy. Thank Gawd they still have NASCAR. - Howard
Howard said...n.n yes, yes and yes. America is so great, good and strong, it can take all of the protest and disrespect thrown at it with grace and charm. The anti-kneeling hysterics are acting weak, ignorant and stupid. The kneeling Negros have invaded the Trump-Right's safe space and they are triggered bigy
I'm not hysterical. It's not news to me that lots of entertainers disagree with "mainstream Americans" politically--that entertainers are much further to the Left than the median American. The attempt to portray opposition to the NFL's expression as racist is weak and ignorant, showing just how little argument for that expression you can muster.
The glaringly different treatment of recent examples of unpopular speech could not more clearly show how false your invocation of some higher principle really is.
When alt-right jackasses march in a protest or some rightwing speaker gives a talk on a campus all we here are shouts of "that's not who we are, we won't tolerate hate" etc, and when those expressions are violently opposed you guys cheer. Nobody on the Left said "we're great, good, and strong enough to shrug off and ignore the expressions of unpopular opinions" then--it was national fucking news for weeks.
Demanding that I turn the other cheek while you get to swing away at any perceived insults--while insisting that I'm somehow morally deficient or unpatriotic if I disagree--is bullshit.
HoodlumDoodlum: If what you say is true, then one has to conclude that the player popularity of anthem kneel-down outweighs the player commitment to defend 911 and dead cops. Sounds like a NFLPA issue. The owners don't want any of it, but the downside (player revolt, librul media shame, etc.) to cracking down on the kneelers exceeds the benefit of siding with President Trump and his core supporters.
>YOU feel disrespected when someone kneels in protest during the anthem. That doesn't mean it's disrespectful.
I take it that you have never been required to take diversity training.
"you make Rhhardins point about the idiocy of forced compulsion."
I have not thought of rh as a leftist but you may know him better than I do.
There is no compulsion, as I understand it, in requiring employees to show up on time in the proper uniform and drug free.
That is called "work." The teams in the NFL pay players far more than they are worth to do something similar. As players have gotten bigger and bigger, there are decreasing numbers of white parents who encourage children to play this increasingly dangerous game.
The result os 70% black players in the NFL. Now we have the problem.
Out of some deluded sense of racial solidarity. the St Louis Rams last year came out for a game with the black players hilding "hands up, Don't shoot" messages.
There were no actual facts behind this protest but it was a tribal theme; blacks against whites or the police who are often black but considered on the "white team."
Now, we have Kaepernick, then the black NFL players with a similar "racial solidarity" message.
White players, a few may try to show fellowship, but this is not about them.
If owners and coaches allow players to choose, it will white players standing and black players hiding in the locker room.
That can't be allowed as it would reveal the motive.
Hence, Villanueva gets punished or threatened if he does not pretend the whole team was unified.
Brookzene, like most leftists, thinks the motive behind BLM is valid. The question of why is interesting.
The left considers blacks to be children and therefore they cannot be expected to handle facts.
They need the left to tell them how to behave. Football fans, for example, are racist if they expect common virtues from blacks.
Listen to a few rap songs and see if that would be permitted in any other setting.
I don't see a solution and it is a shame. In the 1950s, there was real progress being made.
Since Obama, who whites thought would be the final solution as evidence that racism was gone, decided to go for tribal rather than national, sentiment. He was offered the pulpit and chose the devil instead.
The problem for the NFL is that they were in the business of peddling a lot of beer and pickup trucks in their little "safe space" of sports. I don't give a shit if the NFL fails, but it is a stupid business proposition taking the view that a huge swath of your customers are wrong and you feel like injecting politics is more important than serving them.
The nice thing about America is that the customers can walk away, and the players can continue to bring politics onto the field. There can be teams in Austin, Madison, Ann Arbor, Portland, Burlington, Cambridge, Berkeley, it's a huge market opportunity for them, selling their ritualized warfare to pacifists who don't like the sport anyways!!!
Gotta admit it's reeeeeal funny how the same people who shriek about "toxic masculinity" and about how badly women are treated have decided that since they're expressing political opinions the Left now favors these NFL players--poster people for hypermasculinity, lovers of physical violence, and who have a pretty shabby record of crimes against women (domestic abuse & sexual assault)--are good role models of civic engagement.
I bet that'll last past this temporary contretemps, huh?
HD:Demanding that I turn the other cheek while you get to swing away at any perceived insults--while insisting that I'm somehow morally deficient or unpatriotic if I disagree--is bullshit. NO! I'm saying you are Un-American.
"The anti-kneeling hysterics are acting weak, ignorant and stupid."
Another case in point.
This is a predictable emotional reaction to a predictable emotional reaction.
The only way out of this is not some persuasive argument but some cathartic act.
And I can't say what that would be.
"This just isn't serious. We know there's police brutality. We know there's racism. We know that parents sometimes don't really love their children! Asking for more "evidence" before we can move on and address these issues in a just matter is just obfuscating."
Here's some of that evidence you don't think you need.
"The FBI released its official crime tally for 2016 today, and the data flies in the face of the rhetoric that professional athletes rehearsed in revived Black Lives Matter protests over the weekend."
Read the whole thing.
Tim in Vermont:The nice thing about America is that the customers can walk away, and the players can continue to bring politics onto the field. There can be teams in Austin, Madison, Ann Arbor, Portland, Burlington, Cambridge, Berkeley, it's a huge market opportunity for them, selling their ritualized warfare to pacifists who don't like the sport anyways!!!
Exactly right. I hope it works out that way because it's great to watch arrogant billionaires who suck the public teet get punked.
"NO! I'm saying you are Un-American."
And again another illustration. Multiply by millions and add the bulk of the wealth and power of the politico-economic system over decades, and this explains the divide quite well.
What is needed is a massive, overwhelming opposite to this message. It is going to take a lot.
The owners don't want any of it, but the downside (player revolt, librul media shame, etc.) to cracking down on the kneelers exceeds the benefit of siding with President Trump and his core supporters.
That remains to be seen over time, but Trump's "core supporters" and the NFL's "core fanbase" as a Venn diagram, well, you can do the math.
I think the NFL is stupid to follow the advice of people who essentially want the league to die on other grounds, but it's their billions, not mine.
Because he is a side. Its he you need to persuade.
This is the problem in a nutshell.
I'm not as pessimistic as you. First you have to acknowledge some of the hard-core people on the right and left are just not going to be useful at fixing things. You have to work with people who don't just say "LISTEN TO ME!" but who also say "Listen to me and I'll also try to listen to you."
It's hard, it takes time, people aren't used to cutting each other slack. Why make it harder but including those who just won't?
buwaya: the anti-kneel people are being weak... they submit to the call to prayer like the forced social sharia compliance dictated by the wonderful religion of piece.
tim...yeah, it's a risk. NFL probably have big data behind it that "proves" they are making the best out of a bad situation.
Exactly right. I hope it works out that way because it's great to watch arrogant billionaires who suck the public teet get punked.
Which is what is happening. Serves 'em right. Anybody who allows themselves to be taken over by the left, like ESPN has, for example, deserves it. Why the NFL is taking advice from the likes of you is the biggest mystery here.
Howard doesn't understand that "President Trump and his supporters" is about half the NFL fans. Maybe 70%.
The Hollywood left has Chinese and European markets for their anti-American movies and that is one reason why so many movies now are cartoons. Easier to dub the dialogue, what there is of it between car crashes,
American football has a much smaller audience and they are being alienated by the very people who profit.
As I said on another blog, it will be interesting to watch a multi-billion dollar industry destroy itself.
Eastman Kodak invented the digital camera that destroyed it but that was not done on purpose.
I can't think of another example. The closest I can come is World War I when the enemies had previously been trade partners.
Brookzene said...
We know there's police brutality. We know there's racism. We know that parents sometimes don't really love their children! Asking for more "evidence" before we can move on and address these issues in a just matter is just obfuscating.
9/26/17, 11:47 AM
You are answering the wrong question. It is not that "no one believes these things occur" but instead, the question is at what level? Sure you could be trite and say "even one beat down is too much" but then you are into "climate change" territory whereas we need to spend trillions of dollars starting yesterday or the world will end in a year, which no one takes seriously.
As others have pointed out, we all know police brutality is wrong just like we all know rape is wrong. What is the solution and is that solution worth the cost especially if there are more glaring causes of more deaths for black men? Are you "spending your capital" wisely taking a knee for police on black violence versus say black on black violence (which claims far more lives than the police)? All those taking a knee in support of BLM are wasting their political capitol because the foundation of BLM is a lie. There was no "hands up don't shoot". The riots where an excuse to loot. All the protests since, all the disruptions since, and all the commentary since is a fraud because it is attacking 1 10,000th of the problem with a sledge hammer while completely ignoring black on black crime and deaths. It is a sham and a power grab that any sane person can see through. The train has left the station though and now BLM and SJWs have claimed another victim, the NFL. What are those millionaire black men going to do in a year or two when viewership and ticket sales are down to 20% of today? This is the sports version of burning down their own neighborhood. Oh well.
NFL probably have big data behind it that "proves" they are making the best out of a bad situation.
"Big data" can't model human behavior in novel situations.
Howard said...HoodlumDoodlum: If what you say is true, then one has to conclude that the player popularity of anthem kneel-down outweighs the player commitment to defend 911 and dead cops. Sounds like a NFLPA issue. The owners don't want any of it, but the downside (player revolt, librul media shame, etc.) to cracking down on the kneelers exceeds the benefit of siding with President Trump and his core supporters.
Sure; we'll find out who squeals first! It's a business. If enough people support the kneelers then the league will allow it. If enough people don't support it the league will find a way to prevent it. The league pretending they're taking some moral stand is offensive and is demonstrably false given the counterexamples I offered.
I object to the notion that "we" should respect and tolerate the kneelers' political expression given the fact that "we" don't respect and tolerate other political expression that's not favored by the Left.
You're 100% correct, though, that the opinions of the NFL's audience is what will ultimately determine the NFL's position on the matter. I support fully applying the norm that unpopular expression should be punished (by calling for people to be fired, socially ostracized, etc) in this case. It may turn out that the individuals in question are popular enough--or popular enough with enough people--that they will face little practical repercussions for those expressions. So be it. You may be correct that more people support the kneelers than oppose them (within the NFL's audience). So be it--the only way to find out is for those who oppose them to act within the norm and use every available avenue to attack those individuals and groups expressing the "bad" political beliefs.
See? It's another stupid, destructive culture war battle. You don't get to say "we shouldn't have this one, though" just because it's possible the Left might lose.
"I welcome a better analysis. That's my take for the moment."
I'll try ,not sure it'll be any better in your eyes.
Think of the flag as a type of shorthand like a common word or phrase that has a shared meaning, or more accurately several related meanings and uses. It's a proxy for patriotism: it's a simplifying reduction of what America means to an easy to use and share form. It's a language everyone gets. Other things might substitute, the statue of liberty or the bald eagle, but for practical reasons the flag is our agreed upon symbol. So the outrage comes in that desecrating the flag is explicitly telling me you disagree with the American ideal, not just the current president or a given law or practice. So when I see someone turn their back on the flag or kneel or whatever, they are saying: "I don't belong to or support this community." They may mean other things as well but the divisiveness is definite.
"This is the sports version of burning down their own neighborhood. Oh well."
They even have an example with the Missouri football team.
I'm just geeky like that, but why is that board behind him filled with Steeler & PNC logos? Why wouldn't 1 logo of each be enough? This is typical marketing department run amok.
I don't think attendance will crater in 2017 that much because people are fucking addicted to NFL. It will take until 2019/2020 until you see attendance go down sharply.
We're having a big national fight, and nobody is - or very, very few are - shooting or bombing or beating each other.
Do we know how blessed we are?
The flag and the anthem are common ground. It symbolizes that we can disagree politically, come from any background, and we all agree on founding principles. Freedom most of all.
The people kneeling are explicitly making racial charges. They are explicitly stating the country and the people they disagree with are all racists.
The point of disrespecting the flag is to destroy the common ground. It is specifically meant to antagonize and divide. Without the common ground we are Iraq. A bunch of warring tribes held together by a despotic government.
The left just wants to be the despotic government. First they must divide us back into tribes.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) said Tuesday that he will move to force a House floor vote to impeach President Trump next week as he denounced Trump's attacks on NFL players protesting police brutality.
OK, see, this is why everybody gets dragged in. We are all having good fun, and somebody makes it a fight where one has to choose sides. I don't think Trump has done anything on a par with Obama firing the president of GM because he criticized Obama's actions, but I am open to hearing some examples.
Think of the flag as a type of shorthand like a common word or phrase that has a shared meaning, or more accurately several related meanings and uses. It's a proxy for patriotism: it's a simplifying reduction of what America means to an easy to use and share form. It's a language everyone gets. Other things might substitute, the statue of liberty or the bald eagle, but for practical reasons the flag is our agreed upon symbol. So the outrage comes in that desecrating the flag is explicitly telling me you disagree with the American ideal, not just the current president or a given law or practice. So when I see someone turn their back on the flag or kneel or whatever, they are saying: "I don't belong to or support this community." They may mean other things as well but the divisiveness is definite.
The trouble would be that it's against the American ideal to take it as a symbol of the American ideal if reverence towards the symbol is being required.
Lots of words move with context. The flag moves towards fascism in the right context, say when outrage shows up.
A tricky symbol is not a good idea if it has consequences.
My put-down was that it retains its military significance regardless, and civilian reverence is just cheap grace, civilians playing soldier, looking for credit for the the good character that comes from being called and actually going, without going.
I'm pretty convinced that that's accurate. Otherwise the outrage seems inexplicabale. It would be outrage to prevent an illusion from being punctured.
It's a poetic problem here. Is that true to the situation or not.
Big Data said Hillary was gonna stomp Donald, too.
I'm ignoring being called unAmerican since I understand that's just a reflex for cocksucking Leftist flag burning commie lovers--THEY are the only true Americans, after all.
"Listen to me and I'll also try to listen to you."
The trouble here is that one side was born with a megaphone and consequently perhaps suffers from impaired hearing.
The other side is suffering from CTE from being hit on the head so much - and no, I'm not speaking of football players.
No, really, consider the nature of the messages the other side has been getting its whole life, from your side. It amounts to the anvil chorus, for decades, on their heads.
There is a huge lot in the way of "Listen to me". This can't be assumed or worked around.
The point of disrespecting the flag is to destroy the common ground. It is specifically meant to antagonize and divide. Without the common ground we are Iraq. A bunch of warring tribes held together by a despotic government.
The point of disrespecting the flag might be to point out the actual common ground rather than the fake one.
Not that that's true for BLM.
?I don't think attendance will crater in 2017 that much because people are fucking addicted to NFL."
Attendance and TV viewing are different. Season ticket holders have sunk costs. Many are corporations that buy them in blocks to give to employees and customers.
TV viewing is already in trouble from the "cut the cable" trend.
It will be interesting to watch. My wife loves football. I mostly watch college. I was a Seattle fan because of Pete Carroll but that ended this last weekend.
"The point of disrespecting the flag might be to point out the actual common ground rather than the fake one."
That is only a "common ground" of each tribe. Completely different thing.
"We're having a big national fight, and nobody is - or very, very few are - shooting or bombing or beating each other.
Do we know how blessed we are?"
So far. Other nations have also had long-running big national fights without violence.
But...
This sort of thing is usually the precursor to shooting or bombing each other.
buwaya said...
The other side, Trumps side, is getting the message "we hate you", whatever the alleged intended meaning of this message is.
The message isn't "we hate you", it's "we blame you". Rightfully people reject this effort to smear them.
These people also recall who BLM is. They aren't decent people moved by police violence.
They're political radicals who engage in racial intimidation.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1229498/Black-Lives-Matter-protest-storms-Dartmouth-College-library.html
And as this group is smearing all Americans for the actions of some American police do they similarly accept responsibility for their supports murdering multiple police officers?
Of course not.
That is only a "common ground" of each tribe. Completely different thing.
If you get the analysis right, the tribes will agree, except for the leaders possibly, who have the most to lose.
Blogger Howard said...
buwaya puti: again, your view of Americans from whatever lens you are hobbled by is 180-degrees out of phase. Perfection is not possible, but the greatest part of American Exceptionalism is problem solving. We don't just shrug our shoulders, throw up our hands and say "waddaya gonna do, nothing's perfect, it's good enough".
No. What the left does is create problems. Then they blame the problems on others. Hire people to protest the problems. Then they just assert more control over people and create more problems.
They run the shitty inner city public schools. They run the corrupt poverty stricken ghettos. They control the hip culture. They disarm their serfs so they can't defend themselves.
The leftists are enemies of everything this country was founded on.
The message isn't "we hate you", it's "we blame you". Rightfully people reject this effort to smear them.
I respectfully disagree.
The kneeling Negros have invaded the Trump-Right's safe space and they are triggered bigy. Thank Gawd they still have NASCAR.
That comment was motivated by hatred. Hatred for a large tranche of voters the Democrats used to represent before they decided that they could go this whole "identity politics/race hatred" route.
rhhardin said...
You're free because you're human, not because of the government.
9/26/17, 9:34 AM
Would you be so kind to travel back in time and tell that to the Jews at Bergen-Belsen? They probably didn't know that they were free.
Prayer for Eating Chametz on Passover - in Bergen Belsen 1944 ...
https://www.shabboshouse.org/prayer-for-eating-chametz-on-passover-in-bergen-bels...
This crisply handwritten “Chametz on Passover Prayer” from Bergen Belsen ... the Passover holiday by eating Matzah and safeguarding against Chametz.
Or was it that they were not human?
rhhardin said...
A deep habit. You want it deep there.
9/26/17, 9:46 AM
Not you, apparently.
"The message isn't "we hate you", it's "we blame you"."
The message is "we hate AND blame you."
"The message isn't "we hate you", it's "we blame you"."
Not to get nit-picky, but this amounts to the same thing.
And its not the message they are sending that matters, but what the other side is hearing.
And I don't think, on the sending side, its something as specific as "blame" really. The fellows kneeling on the field are just a manifestation of a whole lot of sub-groups behind them, most of whom aren't black. If it were only a black thing this wouldn't be happening at all. There are other things going on, among the various sub-groups on that side, such as contempt, envy, power-lust, fear, displaced shame, and internal politics.
My fault and my fault only. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
It's a religious ritual playing out, but he can't quite sort out the conflicting demands of loyalty -- team, flag, military vets. It's a tough hierarchy to get right.
It took a long time, but rhhardin finally fails the Turing Test.
Unity--so long as it's the 'correct' kind. Let them shit in their own nests if that's what they want. I don't care. I'm done with the NFL. But I feel a little sorry for players who didn't want to unify against the flag. Even so, they caved, so piss on all of them.
tim in vermont said...
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) said Tuesday that he will move to force a House floor vote to impeach President Trump next week as he denounced Trump's attacks on NFL players protesting police brutality."
So criticizing NFL players is an impeachable offense?
Who knew?
YOU feel disrespected when someone kneels in protest during the anthem. That doesn't mean it's disrespectful.
Why are they picking the Anthem to protest then? They have 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week and yet they choose the three minutes during the Anthem to express their displeasure.
Their choice means something, and it's that something the media doesn't want to discuss.
Otherwise, they could choose to kneel when handed the ball on third and short. That would also be a protest, but it would show disrespect to something else - something they choose not to dishonor.
The flag, though, is military. It's used to instill discipline through ceremony.
So, no flags for civilians, we don't deserve 'em? Too good for 'em?
What if we don't have a war for a hundred year and nobody "goes?" Patriotism is obsolete? Flag is obsolete?
Did you really have your kneecaps broken for not standing for the national anthem or the pledge? Have you ever seen this? Do you have any evidence this ever happened?
Would you be so kind to travel back in time and tell that to the Jews at Bergen-Belsen? They probably didn't know that they were free.
Blanchot put the ultimate expression of freedom as suicide.
Acting a bit sooner on the problem might make it more beneficial.
Gee, I wonder Rep Al Green has in common with BLM and the Protestors ?
It took a long time, but rhhardin finally fails the Turing Test.
I love rharden as a commenter, but this comment made me laugh out loud for a solid fifteen seconds.
"The flag, though, is military. It's used to instill discipline through ceremony."
So, no flags for civilians, we don't deserve 'em? Too good for 'em?
Post offices, embassies abroad. No reverence. You don't know where the flag will go as a symbol if there's suddenly a huge motive to move it.
rhhardin said...
That is only a "common ground" of each tribe. Completely different thing.
If you get the analysis right, the tribes will agree, except for the leaders possibly, who have the most to lose.
9/26/17, 12:55 PM
Since I don't think anyone here, even Howard or Brookzene, agrees with your analysis, it must be wrong. Don't you agree? Or are we all leaders who have the most to lose?
rh,
When was the last time you were, and admitted being, wrong about something?
"The trouble would be that it's against the American ideal to take it as a symbol of the American ideal if reverence towards the symbol is being required."
I get this in that requiring respect is antithetical to freedom. Obviously forcing a response on someone is antithetical to freedom but requiring it as part of voluntary membership in a team is not unreasonable. Every job has conditions you agree to on hiring; if you don't like it you leave. If you are a football player you have a responsibility to the team. Interjecting politics damages the brand and your employer would be justified in terminating you.
More directly disrespecting the flag symbolically is disrespecting freedom. It says: "what I want matters but I do not respect your freedom or the system we share". To claim freedom while pissing on it's symbol is hypocrisy. It's a full scale categorical rejection in a single gesture. Those causally offending may not realize what they are saying. They have acquired a lazy adolescent sense of entitlement because their talent has protected them from criticism.
Post offices, embassies abroad. No reverence. You don't know where the flag will go as a symbol if there's suddenly a huge motive to move it.
Syntax error. IOW, WTF?
Blanchot put the ultimate expression of freedom as suicide.
Acting a bit sooner on the problem might make it more beneficial.
So, you vote for not human.
Howard to HoodlumDoodlum: "Demanding that I turn the other cheek while you get to swing away at any perceived insults--while insisting that I'm somehow morally deficient or unpatriotic if I disagree--is bullshit."
NO! I'm saying you are Un-American.
Hmmm. Interesting.
It's Un-American for Hood to fight back while you're beating the crap out of him for perceived insults, and
It's Un-American for Hood to disagree with you about anything.
Well, I always knew that was the lefty definition of "Un-American", but I admit I'm surprised to see it so honestly and succinctly expressed.
If you feel deeply part of America why do you need the flag?
I don't need it, for example.
Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in saluting the flag. Maybe rhhardin is a JW.
Rep. Al Green (D-TX) would introduce articles of impeachment for Trump eating breakfast.
I voted for Trump reluctantly. Now to see the utterly unhinged reaction of the Left, never have I been happier he's President instead of Clinton. Under her a weaponizecd bureaucracy would have felt itself free to wage war on the Deplorables.
I get this in that requiring respect is antithetical to freedom. Obviously forcing a response on someone is antithetical to freedom but requiring it as part of voluntary membership in a team is not unreasonable.
I agree. It's just contract law. The interesting question is where the fan outrage comes from surrounding reverence and disrespect for the flag.
I claim it's a faulty analysis of what deserves what feeling, the flag being both military and civilian, with the honor earned by the military floating over it. If they're separated properly, which is to say cutting the duck at the joints rather than at the bones, the outrage goes away, and the football ceremony becomes just a way to get the crowd to shut up and pay attention. Kneel or not, it doesn't matter.
I am guessing it would also be un-American to turn the channel when "flag burning" is the half-time entertainment during an athletic match of some kind.
Touch my cheek before you leave me.
It took a long time, but rhhardin finally fails the Turing Test.
He reminds me of the "Asian" robot in "Ex Machina" who danced wondrously but with a completely blank expression.
There can be no compromising with the Left. It's all about power for them. It's got to be a war to the knife. All that remains to be decided is how and with what weapons the war will be fought. That's what's going on now, the processing of deciding. The real fight is yet to come. But it will come.
That's just my opinion. I'm professionally and militarily involved in the war with Islamic radicals and that's the way I think. "I am a man under authority," and all that. A centurion, perhaps in need of salvation. Certainly in need of salvation. But aren't we all in such need?
Blogger rhhardin said....
The point of disrespecting the flag might be to point out the actual common ground rather than the fake one.
Society is more fragile than that. A person is smart. A people needs something tangible to unite around.
Europe tries to be like us. But they do not let people speak and they do not let people defend themselves. The people move there and become serfs
We are the most racially diverse country in the world. We are the most culturally diverse country in the world. We have people from everywhere and we have freedom. This country is absolutely unique.
But with people as different as we are we need the symbol. We are not a tribe. We are not culturally and racially homogeneous like every other country has been in history. The flag is a symbol for the country and our freedom. The left despises freedom and they will do anything to take it from us.
I am not protesting the players right to speak. I am responding to what they say and do. They are siding with the enemies of freedom and so are the owners.
.
So criticizing NFL players is an impeachable offense?
The one time Maxine waters has been right in the last twenty years is when she said that impeachment is anything the House says it is.
If enough Representatives wanted to impeach Trump for his comments, they could indeed do so. Remember they impeached Johnson because he wasn't mean enough to the South during Reconstruction.
More directly disrespecting the flag symbolically is disrespecting freedom.
I'm trying to show how it's not. Just the reverse, with the right sort of disrespect.
The interesting question is where the fan outrage comes from surrounding reverence and disrespect for the flag.
This is where your wrong. It's not "outrage" at disrespect for the flag, it's outrage at being denied a little escapism on a Sunday afternoon in autumn because the left has decided that "attention must be paid!" Outrage, BTW, expressed as watching PGA Golf, or figure skating, or doing something besides spending a couple hundred bucks going to a game on Sunday afternoon and spending hours in traffic.
The owners don't want any of it, but the downside … to cracking down on the kneelers exceeds the benefit of siding with President Trump and his core supporters.
Whether the above is true only the future can reveal. Here’s another viewpoint:
If in the beginning the 49ers had banned the demoted QB who was about to be cut from the team from kneeling there would have been a local PR penalty to pay. Disrespecting the flag is practically a required team sport in Progressiveland, after all. By avoiding that local penalty the 49ers have put the entire NFL in jeopardy.
Just think, readers, if only the 49ers had told Keepherneck to stop back then all of this mess the NFL has gotten itself into could have been avoided. What a quagmire! And like so many of the predicaments in which the Left finds itself embroiled it was created by an eagerness to be compliant to political correctness.
I will avoid the NFL for the same reasons I avoid the local garbage dump: It’s unsightly and it stinks.
@Amadeus 48
Check out http://heyjackass.com/. He may still give you the goods on Chicago killin'.
Go Cubs!!!!
That comment was motivated by hatred.
That comment sure but the protests don't definitively include that sort of thing. That comes later when people "defending" the protesters accidentally say what they really think.
More directly disrespecting the flag symbolically is disrespecting freedom.
I'm trying to show how it's not. Just the reverse, with the right sort of disrespect
I agree with rhhardin here. It's not disrespecting freedom and is indeed an example of exercising freedom.
It's disrespecting our nation and those who fought to defend the freedom they are exercising.
When it comes to the issue of excessive police brutality towards young black males, there's things I objectively know, things that I find likely to be the case, things that I'm uncertain are so, and things I doubt highly.
With regards to police taking excessive unwarranted actions like being unnecessarily violent, of course I fully believe that that happens at least on some level. But I have my doubts about how widespread and severe these sorts of events are. Some people will insist events like that happen constantly all over the country, probably hundreds of times a day. Some people will say it's not very common. And what exactly constitute an excessive actions anyway? There's probably a lot of room for interpretation in any event. And even when clearly excessive actions do occur, can we be sure that those motivated primarily by racism, or is the cop having a bad day or just a violent asshole?
According to the WaPo and FBI there were 266 fatal shootings of black people by police in 2015 (For reference there were 497 white and 192 hispanic fatal shootings by police). It's impossible to know all the different situations, what was justified versus what wasn't. And this is just the fatal shootings. There's just not enough information out there to conclude much.
I also know that there was a lot of misinformation and misleading stories around the infamous Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson. There were conflicting narratives from the very beginning, and it seems like there was a lot of political motivation to start a firestorm. It seems like the Freddie Gray case was also filled with lots of half truths. As were other infamous high profile incidents. There always seems to be far more interest in building a narrative for political gain than actually getting to the truth.
I know that the BLM movement has its fair share of black supremacist adherents who have little interest in the truth of these events and are motivated purely by hate/supremacism.
In short, I know that there is no shortage of people who are not fighting in good faith, which makes finding the truth and coming to any kind of resolution far more difficult.
I am not protesting the players right to speak. I am responding to what they say and do. They are siding with the enemies of freedom and so are the owners.
That's just the left in general, it's nothing about the flag.
The idea is take power and you get to siphon off a fraction of all the taxes that flow through your organization, and to hell with the country. It's a stable system, but akin to a thief stealing your $1000 TV and selling it sor $5. The thief comes out ahead, is all that matters to the thief, but the loss to everybody else is huge.
Nevertheless uniting around the flag is a bad idea. It's fake grace, easily subverted therefore.
It's disrespecting our nation
Now we are down to the blood and soil fascism that rh is on about.
I happen to agree with you, there is no practical alternative to borders and nationhood, but I am just telling you where he is. going.
Let's just assume that, if the NFL commissioner and the individual owners are OK with these protests, then we can also assume that those of us who don't like it will turn away from the sport. No one I know is demanding that these players go to jail for flag disrespect. Trump merely suggested that if he were the owner he would fire them. Nothing wrong with that statement, either. The NFL will reap the harvest of their own planting. Only time will tell if it will be a bitter harvest but I suspect it will.
It's about hearing the call and going, not about dying. Everybody who goes is honored.
Even the draftees, rh? Seems they deserve nothing.
Bad Lieutenant to rhhardin: When was the last time you were, and admitted being, wrong about something?
Our rh is not being dishonest or disingenuous here. He is wrong about this in the sense that those primitive AI programs we used to dick around with in philosophy class (lo those many decades ago), that would churn out comically inapt "analyses" to questions posed in natural language, were "wrong".
If you read over his comments here it should become clear that there are certain, er, limitations in the programming, relative to this kind of issue, that make arguing kinda pointless.
It's disrespecting our nation and those who fought to defend the freedom they are exercising.
No, what's owed to the military is the free country they're working for.
Everybody wants to make the flag a curse.
Nearly all of the "police brutality" and black deaths occur in Democrat run cities. Quite a few have black police chiefs and numerous black officers. Why is this a non-black problem?
"It's about hearing the call and going, not about dying. Everybody who goes is honored."
Even the draftees, rh? Seems they deserve nothing.
Certainly the draftees. They're called, they go. That's all it takes.
Achilles: "But with people as different as we are we need the symbol. We are not a tribe. We are not culturally and racially homogeneous like every other country has been in history. The flag is a symbol for the country and our freedom. The left despises freedom and they will do anything to take it from us."
Brilliantly said.
The late blogger Steven Den Beste argued that to be an American is not to be limited by your race or national original. You come to this country, meet the citizenship qualifications, believe in the shared values, BOOM! You're an American.
Look at the flip side: I'm half-German. My wife is born of an American father, German mother. We could move to Germany, raise our kids as Germans, and four generations later, we'd still be known as "the Americans."
Whereas, you bring your family here from Vietnam, buy a hotel, build a business, raise your kids here, take the oath: You're an American. (Yes, there are assholes who will say otherwise. They're wrong.)
That's the American exceptionalism I believe in. Yes, it's stained in racism. There've been massacres and injustice. We also talk about it (try that in Turkey about the Armenians) and we make accommodations about it.
And I take exception to racists. Illinois Nazis, antifadists, Democrats who call the Maryland Secretary of State "Oreo" because he's Republican. You play the race card, expect to get Trumped.
("What he say? Forget it, he's rolling.")
So there's the dream, and there's the reality. I want to work toward the dream. I want free speech for all, the kneelers and the Obama mask wearers.
Just don't ask me to accept one set of rules that protects Democrats in power and attacks a Republican in power. Don't piss down my leg and say it's sunshine.
Meanwhile
A black power fan of Louis Farrakhan and Malcom X shot up a church yesterday. You can read about it on page 35 of your newspaper.
On the matter of flags -
These WERE at one time military symbols only. But this argument is obsolete.
The popular civilian symbols in Medieval Europe were religious - images, icons, and indeed flags. These are what the people carried before them as a symbol of themselves. But they did indeed have symbols of themselves.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/40/fd/84/40fd84016e0a01779d45245691e22cec.jpg
At times these were carried into battle, usually by peasant levies and civic militia.
At one time flags were symbolic of the sovereign, or war-lord, and were personal symbols. The flags flown by forces loyal to Henry VIII, Maximilian I, Ferdinand and Isabela were derivatives of symbols of their dynasty or their territorial claims.
http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/g/gb_trir.gif
This changed. Once you had nation-states those under their authority in a semi-or non-military case acquired national identifiers, for instance flags for merchant vessels. Others drifted from their dynastic symbolism into a national one, hence the "Aspa de Borgoña" - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CoNmqiYW8AA9k5I.jpg survived, as the Spanish flag, the change of dynasties from Habsburg to Bourbon.
Come the French Revolution the state became a civic, personal thing. Hence the explosion in national symbols adopted by civilians, in part because local religious traditions were displaced. It was no longer just something for armies. Blame the French, but everyone, including the Americans, copied them. Hence little children were taught they were French, the flag was flown in schools, classrooms were decorated in red white and blue bunting, the kids learnt the "Marseillaise" - national anthems came in at the same time - and that they were all descended from the Gauls - national myths likewise.
So now it is not a military thing.
http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/REU-SOCCER-EURO__004.jpg
buwaya said...
And its not the message they are sending that matters, but what the other side is hearing.
I'm not sure there's a difference. Those crafting the message are pretending they can both attack a symbol and deny the symbolism. But they can't force everyone else to accept such nonsense. They chose to blame America because doing so would draw attention. Now everyone understands they're anti-American idiots.
I'd say the program is working.
You play the race card, expect to get Trumped.
Well said, Bill!
"In 2016, the police fatally shot 233 blacks, the vast majority armed and dangerous, according to the Washington Post. The Post categorized only 16 black male victims of police shootings as “unarmed.” That classification masks assaults against officers and violent resistance to arrest."
Hoffman: Don't go "Boy Scout" on me. We don't have a rule book, here.
Donovan: You're Agent Hoffman, yeah?
Hoffman: Yeah.
Donovan: German extraction.
Hoffman: Yeah, so?
Donovan: My name's Donovan. Irish. Both sides, mother and father. I'm Irish, you're German. But what makes us both Americans? Just one thing. One, one, one. The rule book. We call it the Constitution... and we agree to the rules, and that's what makes us Americans. It's all that makes us Americans so don't tell me there's no rule book... and don't nod at me like that, you son of a bitch.
- Bridge of Spies (2015)
"We are not culturally and racially homogeneous like every other country has been in history."
Very few modern countries have been culturally homogenous (race was a later complication).
Britain, Spain, France, Germany, even Belgium certainly weren't and still aren't.
Much of the homogenizing that went on in these places was very recent, a process mainly running through the 19th and 20th centuries.
The US is not unique here. More so, most countries historically have had deep linguistic divides, and most large countries today still do, which was not generally the case in the US.
The US is not as unique as you think.
"But with people as different as we are we need the symbol. We are not a tribe."
Achilles makes my point better than I did.
"I'm trying to show how it's not. Just the reverse, with the right sort of disrespect."
OK I agree that, conditionally when very carefully articulated, rejecting the flag can be a sign of freedom: if it's intended as a statement that our system is not living up to it's ideals. However the flag also symbolizes unity and rejecting also says "I disrespect the normal methods of redress and any shared sense of community". The flag is loaded with meaning and rejecting it will stir up many meanings, depending on the audience. Anyone wanting to be understood must expect that a meaning beyond what they intended may be communicated by disrespecting the flag. So they may "with the right" disrespect intend one thing but they should anticipate that they may be heard differently. Anyone using such crude speech to make a precise point deserves the backlash and they can not expect to be understood in a refined idealized way.
exiledonmainstreet said...
So criticizing NFL players is an impeachable offense?
Who knew?
9/26/17, 1:04 PM
Criticizing football in Texas sure is. Used to be a hanging offence. They have softened...
Art Rooney II, the president of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, told fans on Tuesday that his team both respected military service members and didn´t intend to make a political statement when its players stood off the field during the national anthem on Sunday: (Copy of Statement/Tweet) “The intentions of Steelers players were to stay out of the business of making political statements by not taking the field. Unfortunately, that was interpreted as a boycott of the anthem — which was never our players´ intention,” Rooney said in a statement.
In other news, Rooney II, who thanked Obama for his team's Super Bowl win, sent several pairs of soiled underwear to the cleaners, and at least two to the dumpster.
All is proceeding as the left has foreseen, chump. They say a 'fool' is somebody who doesn't understand the stakes of the game until it's over and they have lost their shirt...
Flags are descended from totems. They have totemic significance, which are about more, much more, than kings and military endeavors. "A totem . . . is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe."
Or nation.
Bridge of Spies was a polemic disguised as entertainment.
@rhHardin What do you think symbolizes the country as a whole better than the flag? I see Roughcoat has the answer to your multiple off-base comments at 1:47.
OK I agree that, conditionally when well very carefully articulated, rejecting the flag can be a sign of freedom: if it's intended as a statement that our system is not living up to it's ideals.
Alas, I'm against that and for another sort of disrespect, namely that respect for the flag is itself against freedom. It's the wrong reverence.
(Opposite in the military, which is how it starts to get confused in the popular imagination.)
I'm against that, the former, because it doesn't say what you'd want to say. If the flag were the right reverence, were the symbol you want it to be, it would be the way forward out of the condition being protested. Far from disrespecting it, you'd want to nurture it against whatever it keeping it from fulfilling its promise. That is, embrace the promise, which would be embracing the flag. So it's protest failure, a sort of stupidity.
Nevertheless, the flag is the wrong reverence, which is my criticism of the crowd reaction, and Trump's reaction, playing on it when he probably knows better.
HoodlumDoodlum pretty well covers everything I have to say about it. Henry and Brookzene, go back and read his comments with an open mind. Can you get even a glimmer of why the right is pushing back? Enough already.
"You come to this country, meet the citizenship qualifications, believe in the shared values, BOOM! You're an American."
This also is not unique to the US. This was European SOP pre-nationalism, pre-19th century. In a way the US held on to quite ancient traditions, a throwback skipping the Romantic-period growth of ethnic essentialism.
In Europe it was common to not merely make foreigners citizens (or subjects), but to give them high positions and responsibilities, far beyond what a naturalized foreigner is likely to be entrusted with by a modern nation -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Eugene_of_Savoy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_de_Saxe
No, I think Bridge of Spies was exactly right.
What makes us American is we agree to the same rules.
So for example Muslims can't be Americans because they won't let you draw Mohammad. That ought to have immigration rule effects.
This malarkey is certainly not about "love between my brothers and sisters all over this land." These non-attending Steelers, absented from the playing of "The Defense of Fort McHenry" and hand-holding Redskins is the result of management decisions designed to appeal to the missing butts-in-seats crowd - but Raider fans don't much care at Fed-Ex Field and Heinz Field attendees approve of anything that the Rooney Family does.
Suddenly we had another cause - "team solidarity" but who gives a flying fickle finger of fate about unanimity? The group grope by the Native Americans reminds me that players have not given attention to the anthem for years - and few have stood at attention with their hand over heart, after having first removed their head cover (helmet).
rhhardin,
With all due respect, I don't think you get to decide what the flag means.
"In 2016, the police fatally shot 233 blacks, the vast majority armed and dangerous, according to the Washington Post. The Post categorized only 16 black male victims of police shootings as “unarmed.” That classification masks assaults against officers and violent resistance to arrest."
I hope people on the other side can concede the point that most of these shootings were justified. But human nature being what it is, I know many people will simply think "Yeah, that's what they're claiming, but they're just part of a corrupt system that protecting bad racist cops". Certain people will always choose to believe something is the case even when there's actual evidence to refute it by using the justification of mistrusting the source of the evidence. It's not exactly cognitive dissonance, since they simply refuse to believe something is the case.
Americans don't do sacred objects.
Criticizing football in Texas sure is. Used to be a hanging offence. They have softened...
9/26/17, 1:46 PM
I know about their football culture.
Does Texan culture also applaud those who disrespect the Anthem?
There are other football games besides NFL ones.
With all due respect, I don't think you get to decide what the flag means.
I get to analyze it. The best analysis wins.
it's a question of poetic accuracy, a sort of lit crit exercise.
Account for all the feelings and where they ought to be placed in the system to make sense.
"They say a 'fool' is somebody who doesn't understand the stakes of the game until it's over and they have lost their shirt..."
No, that's a "Mark."
A fool is one who brags about doing something that will make him broke.
Much of the homogenizing that went on in these places was very recent, a process mainly running through the 19th and 20th centuries.
I disagree with this. The Angles and the Saxons and the Norsemen homogenized over a thousand years ago. The same for the Franks although the Normans and the Bretons were around the time of the Revolution.
The Saxon Knights that settled Poland and East Prussia spoke German that was very similar to Old English.
That also happened over a thousand years ago.
"I get to analyze it. The best analysis wins."
OK I'm game what is it you object to? I see you agree with the idea of a shared rule book, i e the Constitution. Is the flag, in your analysis, opposed to it or a threat to it, and by what mechanism, blind obedience perhaps? I see that point, but it's my sense that we are very very far removed from that danger.
"Flags are descended from totems. They have totemic significance, which are about more, much more, than kings and military endeavors."
In Sienna, flags were the symbols of neighborhoods and there are still markers of their totems at street corners that mark their district. They raced horses in the Palio and still do.
Blogger rhhardin said...
It's disrespecting our nation and those who fought to defend the freedom they are exercising.
No, what's owed to the military is the free country they're working for.
And that means fighting the enemies of freedom. The people kneeling are implicitly siding with the enemies of freedom. They are providing support for people who say the country is racist and founded on racism.
You are right they have the right to do it because we fought for them to have it. I have the right to oppose their disgusting efforts to undermine our efforts using the freedom we gave them.
Christopher Duffy wrote two excellent books (well, a great number of excellent books) describing, in enormous detail, the nature of the Prussian and Austrian armies of the Seven Years War, based on his own archival research.
"The Army of Frederick the Great"
"Instrument of War: The Austrian Army in the Seven Years War"
These are not merely military trivia, there is a great deal there of all sorts of things, not least of sociological significance.
One interesting thing is he had tables breaking down the composition, the origins, of the officer corps of the various armies and the enlisted ranks. Its clear that these were eclectic, multi-national multi-lingual bodies. And this diversity went all the way to the top.
I bring this up to make a point - pre-nationalist Europe was NOT nationalist, and even the upper reaches of power were open to the foreigner, with the right qualifications. This persisted in Europe until the mid-19th century.
"Americans don't do sacred objects."
Sure they do: The Tomb of the Unknown, the Liberty Bell, the Constitution, the Lincoln memorial, the hallowed ground at Gettysburg and Arlington etc. Sacred simply means set aside, typically for reverence. We absolutely do reverence, although it's not universal.
OK I'm game what is it you object to? I see you agree with the idea of a shared rule book, i e the Constitution. Is the flag, in your analysis, opposed to it or a threat to it, and by what mechanism, blind obedience perhaps? I see that point, but it's my sense that we are very very far removed from that danger.
The flag is easy grace. It's the crowd entertaining itself by playing soldier without any soldier work. The crowd doesn't care whether the constitution works or not, just that they respect the flag. Any enemy can take over and they still have the flag.
The flag is not the thing to watch out for, in short. It will most often be a distraction, played for you by somebody who wants a distraction. A vulnerability to freedom.
The military flag is very specifically aimed at discipline. Nothing else to safeguard there, so it works.
It doesn't work in civilian life.
For example, Trump is using it right now for another purpose. He ought to be saying BLM ought to be embracing the constitution not disparaging it, and leave the flag out of it.
Brookzene said...
I think that your use of the phrase "no police brutality" is a transparent attempt to hide the fact that you have no evidence to back up your charges.
This just isn't serious. We know there's police brutality. We know there's racism. We know that parents sometimes don't really love their children! Asking for more "evidence" before we can move on and address these issues in a just matter is just obfuscating. If you need more evidence then you aren't really someone who can be a partner in fixing these problems. Your opinion or your help is probably not worthwhile if you can't acknowledge or stipulate to some basics.
9/26/17, 11:47 AM
Psst...there is no fixing these problems.
There's always going to be a need to crack somebody over the head with a nightstick, and there's always going to be second-guessing of that need.
There's always going to be some form of racism. Even if there were never an act of racism there would be thoughts of racism and you would not be satisfied.
There's sure-shit always going to be parents who don't love their children.
It's The Problem Of Pain. The world is not perfectible. That's what heaven is for.
As for free speech in the NFL? Apparently, only if you're an SJW. No 9/11 socks, but pig socks is fine. No kneeling for prayer or to protest abortion, maybe, but kneeling for BLM, or as you say to oppose the President, jim-dandy. Can you perceive that this is a problem?
"Americans don't do sacred objects."
Sure they do: The Tomb of the Unknown, the Liberty Bell, the Constitution, the Lincoln memorial, the hallowed ground at Gettysburg and Arlington etc. Sacred simply means set aside, typically for reverence. We absolutely do reverence, although it's not universal.
Tomb of the Unknown, Gettysburg, Arlington are military, really, it's about the honor in being called and going, so it's not exactly the object that's sacred.
I don't think the others amount to a hill of beans
I'll agree that the flag is an easy "grace" but not that it's solely about discipline: that is reduction in the extreme. You'll have to support that assertion if you expect me to buy into it.
Your own lack of reverence is immaterial to the meaning others may have.
The people kneeling are implicitly siding with the enemies of freedom. They are providing support for people who say the country is racist and founded on racism.
I think you're just mad about the flag thing.
BLM is just making a mistake and can be argued out of it, if there's a forum for it. The media aren't going to let that happen, so I'd say the media is the enemy. They want soap opera and eyeballs.
Focus the fight where it matters.
"Tomb of the Unknown, Gettysburg, Arlington are military, really"
In a nation where the military is seen as being the people in arms - and this is largely still so in the US in spite of the end of conscription - there is no real distinction. These places are (or were) sacred to the people, not merely the military.
And this also goes back to the French Revolution, with the "aux armes, citoyens, formez vos bataillons" of 1792.
I don't have time to roam through all of these comments, but I just have to say that Hoodlum is on fire in the first 200. Though I admit, I still am not sure about going all Alinsky on the left, he's absolutely right on the disparities that exist in who has to follow what rules.
"so I'd say the media is the enemy."
Well, yes it is, but that is because it is a centrally directed propaganda ministry devoted to its masters interests. This all is not being organized simply for the sake of eyeballs.
As for a distraction I disagree: the flag is loaded with symbolism and can be a little history lesson in itself as it symbolically captures both distinction of each state and their common ground, Also while it can be used improperly that a does not invalidate its better uses.
I'll agree that the flag is an easy "grace" but not that it's solely about discipline: that is reduction in the extreme. You'll have to support that assertion if you expect me to buy into it.
It gets to be easy grace from the military use. Look, I'm disciplined and dedicated too just like the military even though I'm not doing a damn thing but standing here with my hand on my heart, and I deserve the same respect and honor as the military.
That's the idea.
In Europe it was common to not merely make foreigners citizens (or subjects), but to give them high positions and responsibilities, far beyond what a naturalized foreigner is likely to be entrusted with by a modern nation.
Oh, applesauce! Bushwah!
Eugene of Savoy and Maurice de Saxe were aristocrats, members of the transnational European aristocracy, Membership in this elite group transcended nationality which, at the time these two men lived, was still nascent, both in concept and practice. Aristocrats could move freely in aristocratic circles and be accepted and serve in high positions no matter where they went. You were a member of an exclusive club in which your aristocratic rank and kinship with other aristocrats served to grant you entry to the clubhouses no matter what country you were in. Most of them spoke French to each other (and Italian to their mistresses).
For commoners, and even men of the still small middle/merchant classes, it was a different story. Commoners were not "easily" made citizens of other countries, even when they served in their armies. They most certainly could not serve in high positions and responsibilities. They were scarcely citizens in their own countries. They were virtual serfs. Charles V famously said (supposedly) that he spoke German to his horse; one presume he treated his horse better than the German people over whom he ruled. Which attitude goes a long way to explaining why my Irish and German great-grandparents emigrated to America, where they could be easily naturalized, despite being commoners, and work their way up to high positions with great responsibilities.
This was not possible elsewhere. America was and the exception that proves the rule. America was and is exceptional.
Having adopted the mindset (and, I daresay, the arrogant demeanor) of a Spanish colonial aristocrat, a type with whom you have openly and often identified in this blog, your failure to grasp this point is to be expected.
"There's always going to be some form of racism."
It's just that it has reversed in the past 25 years,
Thomas Sowell said it best. "I am so old that I can remember when all the racists were white/"
Affirmative Action has created a client class that believes it is entitled to anything they can get.
Now we have the "Reparations" crap. The parasites are taking over.
>and I deserve the same respect and honor as the military.
That is simply laughable.
I don't think you've supported your argument here. I have no connection to the military, but I voluntarily display and revere the flag because I share the ideals it represents. No one is forcing me to: rather it's an act of freedom to display it and it's one of the few symbols I will display. I really find your distaste for it hard to understand, and I am trying to understand.
"In a nation where the military is seen as being the people in arms "
That used to be the case in Britain. It is no more. The military class, which included the aristocrats who began as soldiers, is dying out.
Recently, convalescent soldiers were barred from using a community pool.
Victoria built a palace for disabled soldiers that was next to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. It was the servants' quarters when she was alive and, when I was there in 1977, it was still a center for wounded soldiers recovering, a sort of VA rehab hospital.
"If you feel deeply part of America why do you need the flag?
I don't need it, for example."
Do you, feel deeply part of America? You don't seem to need, feel or care about anything that doesn't enhance your signal strength. You'd trade the continent and everyone on it for a bigger antenna.
Let me assure you with metaphysical certainty that you have no idea how anyone not named rhhardin feels about anything whatsoever. How could you?
...
Since you were so charmingly, characteristically frank about Jews, I'll share a little thought of my own. I've often wondered whether autistic spectrum people can be forced to be or act normal. Like these kids who keep searingly focused on their video games or coloring books or DVDs or whatever and ignore people talking to them. Some, as you know, grow to adulthood without changing.
I wonder how high you would have to turn up O'Brian's pain dial, say, to get them to look up, make eye contact, listen to people speaking to them, sensibly answer people speaking to them, generally to stop screaming, and rocking, and hitting their mothers and other caretakers, and comply. I don't wish it, but I am curious as to whether anything can make them snap out of it.
Or leave out human agency, if they are in a house and the house is on fire, can they attend the smoke alarm, can they get their act together and walk out, or do they have to keep petting their gerbil or pasting in their scrapbook, and will lash out at the fireman trying to carry them out the window? When they die screaming, is it the flames, or the fact that they are taken away from their chosen perseveration?
What do you think?
BTW Assrat is right: the idea that you deserve the same respect as the military is very odd. The military is not respected just for discipline but for sacrifice in the defense of liberty, as is obvious. I really wonder if you are being serious.
The flag is easy grace. It's the crowd entertaining itself by playing soldier without any soldier work. The crowd doesn't care whether the constitution works or not, just that they respect the flag. Any enemy can take over and they still have the flag.
Not everyone needs to be a hero. In the army we learned that we win when everyone does their job.
Some of us are/were soldiers. Some are teachers. Some are engineers. Whatever. Our society needs all kinds.
The one job that everyone has is to support the common ground we all stand on. The belief in the good faith efforts of everyone to continue to make our country better.
Veterans understand that not everyone is going to commit as much as we do. But we do appreciate the effort and support for what we do. If I didn't think the overwhelming majority of people in this country were good decent people I wouldn't fight for it. We need to hold on to the belief that our country is a symbol of freedom to the world and the people in our country are willing to fight for and respect it.
In this country the symbol for our common efforts is the flag. It just is. It is the symbol we put on our shoulder. It is the symbol we fly over shared events. It is the symbol they bury us in. The civilians have their own struggles and contributions. If the civilians didn't contribute we wouldn't fight.
"Membership in this elite group transcended nationality which, at the time these two men lived, was still nascent" - note - nascent. Not yet existing.
Of course one had to be an aristocrat - well, most of the time, there are interesting exceptions. But that was the nature of the time. And it is important, don't you think, that there was an international upper class? That broke down, mostly, in the 19th century.
With some interesting exceptions -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Carton_de_Wiart
There were however quite liberal flows of ordinary peoples across national and linguistic borders. There are, for instance, a remarkable number of humble French-speaking Huguenots who fetched up in Britain, Germany, and Holland. There are a remarkable number of Poles and Hungarians who ended up in France. There are regions of Italy that were at one time majority-Albanian. There are even Turks (I have one such ancestor) who settled in France. 18th-century Europe was far more cosmopolitan than most people think.
And, technically, I am no aristocrat by ancestry, merely bourgeois. My ancestors were in the main peasants and fishermen.
even the upper reaches of power were open to the foreigner, with the right qualifications.
The "right qualifications" meant, for the most part, that you were a member of the aristocracy. If you weren't, the upper reaches of power were forever beyond your reach. There were exceptions to this, of course, but they were few and they were the exceptions that proved the rule. It is true that European armies before in the Early Modern period (before the French Revolution) were multi-ethnic and polyglot forces, but to suggest that the common soldier was anything more than an armed serf with possibilities for advancement into the "upper reaches of power" is really quite absurd. It was only under Napoleon that any common soldier might dream of carrying a marshal's baton in his knapsack, and that was ONLY the case in the French army.
You know I gave you a pass earlier, ignoring some points but this "The crowd doesn't care whether the constitution works or not" is a mind reading error. How would you know this? Your cynicism is on display here and you impugn the crowd and dismiss their devotions without evidence. This is just bitterness pretending to be analysis.
The Huguenots were fleeing Louis XIV but that was not exactly free immigration.
He revoked the Edict of Nantes, among many other things he did to destroy the French nation.
I don't know how the Poles and Hungarians ended up in France. There were lots of such people in Napoleon's army but most died in Russia.
I couldn't watch. I'd probably find it depressing and then get very angry.
BLM is just making a mistake and can be argued out of it, if there's a forum for it. The media aren't going to let that happen, so I'd say the media is the enemy. They want soap opera and eyeballs.
And the media is relentlessly pushing the protests against the flag. They know the outlet that celebrates Villanueva and the players that stand is going to instantly lead the ratings but they choose to side with the people attacking the flag. So what does that tell you?
"The "right qualifications" meant, for the most part, that you were a member of the aristocracy. "
Or had a trade. Or an art. Or scholarship. Or were soldiers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frideric_Handel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Samuel,_1st_Viscount_Bearsted
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eberhardt_Otto_George_von_Bock
And it is important, don't you think, that there was an international upper class?
No, it is not relevant to original point. Except insofar as it disproves your point.
There were however quite liberal flows of ordinary peoples across national and linguistic borders.
Leaving aside the problematic use, in this context, of the term liberal, I would say: so what? They remained commoners wherever they went and assimilation was not readily accomplished. In the time period of which we speak, they remained virtual serfs. Access to the "upper reaches" of power were almost universally denied to them.
And, technically, I am no aristocrat by ancestry, merely bourgeois. My ancestors were in the main peasants and fishermen.
But you affect the airs of a Spanish hidalgo in post of colonial governance. And you do not hesitate to remind us that you are a man apart, an outsider -- very definitely not an American. Which is a very colonial attitude to take, and project.
>BTW Assrat is right: the idea that you deserve the same respect as the military is very odd.
With respect, I don't believe rhardin is claiming that he deserves such respect. I believe he claims that civilians respecting the flag believe that. Both of which are, in my opinion, nonsensical.
Thank Assrat I think I misread that then, I'll let that one go
Bad Lieutenant: As for free speech in the NFL? Apparently, only if you're an SJW. No 9/11 socks, but pig socks is fine. No kneeling for prayer or to protest abortion, maybe, but kneeling for BLM, or as you say to oppose the President, jim-dandy. Can you perceive that this is a problem?
It's not a problem for Brookzene. It's a situation that is, as you say, jim-dandy. No need to do anything, as the arc of history bends in the correct direction, but pay a little "oh of course I believe in free speech for all" lip service when queried, while always being unaccountably distracted when people like you are having your 1st amendment rights respected by a bicycle lock to the head. Or occasionally having to produce a bit of flimsy sophistry explaining away why it's OK to make you STFU and bake the cake, but an egregious assault on Our Principles of Civility or Snowflake P. Victim's rights to let wrongthinkers peaceably assemble or otherwise express themselves.
Is there a problem here? I'm not seeing a problem...
Or had a trade. Or an art. Or scholarship. Or were soldiers.
Or a farmer, or a railroad worker, e.g., like my great grandparents? Well, no. They were treated like serfs in their own homelands.
Soldiers serving in foreign armies in the time of which we speak suffered horrible treatment on a daily basis. Or did you learn nothing in your readings about service in the armies of Frederick the Great?
Artists and scholars and musicians of note were the exceptions that proved the rule. They were literally "patronized" by their aristocratic patrons. My great grandparents did not enjoy their privileges nor were they the recipient of monetary gifts.
"But you affect the airs of a Spanish hidalgo in post of colonial governance."
You have not met an actual hidalgo. They are much nicer.
And as for being a colonialist, well, yes, that was the family business pretty much, why not?
There are advantages in that role.
A certain analytical distance for one.
Bad Lt. @2:33 PM:
That was very funny, Bad, but not as funny as the people arguing earnestly with Sperg-Man about his "analysis".
Americans don't do sacred objects? Sure we do. Take a whizz on the JFK eternal flame or drape your sports logo over Martin Luther King's tomb and see how quickly you're treated as a heretic.
We're probably somewhat LESS enamored of sacred object than some other nations/cultures, but we still have them. More than the few sacred sites, too, we have several non-military reverential "monuments"--the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell, etc. My objection to mobs tearing down "confederate monuments" was partially that many of those monuments were not to individuals (or not only to individuals) but to large numbers of men who fought, and civilians who suffered, and died. The Peace Monument in my city, Atlanta, being one (it has been defaced twice recently). It's not a sacred object to me strictly speaking, but I do get angry when it is treated disrespectfully--both for the message being sent by someone doing so and for the harm to the object itself.
Totemic veneration isn't logical. Professor Althouse rarely tires of pointing out the folly of ignoring the role emotion and feeling play in politics and our every day lives. You think people shouldn't feel the way they do about "the flag" and you've given a lot of reasons for that belief. Your reasons, though, may not do much to change the way lots of people feel about the issue.
[I think it may be helpful to think of the kneeling as a subversion/response to the RITUAL of standing respectfully for the anthem, as opposed to focusing strictly on "the flag." The two are very closely related, of course, but I think agreeing that it's a civic ritual under discussion here (to what degree that ritual is important/should be followed/should be alloed to be protested, etc) might help the discussion.]
I don't know how the Poles and Hungarians ended up in France. There were lots of such people in Napoleon's army but most died in Russia.
Many, including those that didn't die in Russia fighting for Napoleon, fled to France.
You have not met an actual hidalgo. They are much nicer.
They are more polite. Not nicer.
"The Huguenots were fleeing Louis XIV but that was not exactly free immigration."
They were for the most part welcomed, by the Elector of Brandenburg for one, and given Prussian lands. Its the welcome that is interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Potsdam
There was no great reason to move, for most people. They were peasants and had their own soil, or did not. But the cities were an attraction not merely to displaced or ambitious peasants of the region, but to foreigners as well.
"I think the protests are designed to get the slow-walkers and obstructionists out of the way."
And I think the protests are designed to say 'you don't get to tell me what to do. I'm a star athlete. In your face!'
Unless of course they are meant to say what Kapernik was saying, 'cops are pigs'.
The message conveyed by this lunacy is incoherent. Because it is we get to wrap our own meaning around it. It's divisive. Pretty much the same thing you complain about regarding Trump's tweets.
Many of the Huguenots went to England and it has been said that they brought the Industrial Revolution to England.
Those who went to England at least seemed to have been merchants or craftsmen, not peasants.
I blame Washinton and his immortals. The 1st Maryland Regiment were the Rangers of the Revolutionary War. They fought all the impossible battles to stop the British Empire from slaughteringWashington's volunteers time after time in 8 years of fighting to the death. That Tradition is the founding politics of the United States.
And Pittsburgh/western Pennsylvania area has long been the most warrior like community outside of the American South. As an
Army Ranger this dude just had no choice to run away and hide like the bad leadership of the NFL Steelers wanted him to do.
Maybe the empty Stadiums can be sold to FIFA. They play a Globalist approved football.
There was only one actual Spanish aristocrat who ever settled in the Far East - there were lots in Mexico and Peru though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad_Pardo_de_Tavera
This is his ggggrandaughter - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Maria_Perez_de_Tagle
In the meantime, a black man, a Somali refugee, gunned down white people in a church this weekend, killing one and injuring others before he was shot by a member of the congregation who ran out to his car and got his gun.
It was my understanding that the Somali (a legal resident who's been in the USA > 10 years) was shot in a tussle and then subdued, and then the congregant went to get his gun. The reporting on this event was poor. What exactly happened might yet elude me.
Even the draftees, rh? Seems they deserve nothing.
Certainly the draftees. They're called, they go. That's all it takes.
Nonsense. Cheap grace. They only go because otherwise Uncle Sam would break their kneecaps.
Guess you're not for medals either? The Japanese weren't. Like you - all soldiers are meritorious.
MadisonMan
Gunman was confronted by a young man who was pistol whipped by the young man. Young man went to his truck and got his gun and came back in and the gunman surrendered. That is the story coming out of Nashville. The press is not interested for two obvious reasons: He was stopped by someone who had a gun. He was black. Two narrative fails do not get you in the NYT.
rharden refuses to compromise on his premises. It has been interesting to watch him delineate so clearly some of what fundamentally makes us human through his bold use of negative space. (With apologies to guido..)
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